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Great Web Sites: General Research Guide: Meta Sites

Need to find quality material on the open web? Has your professor asked you to find a web page for your paper or Powerpoint, well look no further.

Google and Privacy

Google and Privacy

Before you just go grabbing Google, think again. Google searching leaves a trail that may let advertisers, the government, and who knows who else know where you have been. You can read about Google and privacy by searching the library web page. You can also enjoy privacy enhanced Google searching with Startpage.com, Qwant, or Duck Duck Go. You can read more about privacy enhanced searching at The Search Engine and Directory Snapshot.

General Meta Sites

world in the net  General Meta Sites

General Meta Sites cover a wide variety of subjects and are mainly for the general public, though they often contain a lot of both newsworthy and scholarly material. Many have live editors that screen out obvious "clunkers" such as term paper mills and quack physicians selling useless nostrums.

Curlie: Curlie is short for collection of URLs, and uses live editors to add sites to a variety of subject categories. Curlie includes a Kids and Teens category and endless Regional categories to help those planning trips. The Science and Radio listings are also especially helpful. The site is no longer searchable, but the search engine will return eventually.

Dotdash: Dotdash is made of ten broad categories with an several others under development: Vacation at TripSavvy, Health at Verywell, Money/Business at The Balance and Investopedia, and Tech/Computers at Lifewire. amd style at MyDomaine, the Spruce, and Brides. The site is mainly articles written by Dotdash staff, but they include links, often to primary sources. Dotdash is especially good for consumer, recreational and nonacademic topics.

Dummies: Dummies' slogan is "Learning made easy," and this site's publisher is Wiley, which publishes the famous for Dummies series. The site features current and credible articles and videos on how to do just about anything.

Google Scholar: Google's search engine for the world of scholarly research. This search engine brings up university departments and government and academic research pages, but it also searches publishers' sites for journals' tables of contents and sometimes even suggests books. Note: the journals seen on Google Scholar are seldom full text due to copyright restrictions.

Arts and Letters Daily: The articles in the middle of the page cover mainly specialized, humanities. The action is with the list of sources on the left side of the page. Note: some of the news sources have PAYWALLS.

Science.gov: A gateway to US Federal Government agencies' funded science and technology web pages and also some nongovernment web sites. The site lists government agency pages and online government publications. There are also featured pages. Needless to say, it is advertising free.